Fat Adaptation VS. Ketosis
Thomas DeLauer breaks down Fat Adaptation and how to get there using Ketosis on the latest #ScienceSaturday
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Transcript by Rev.com
- What's up, Jigsaw land. It's Thomas DeLauer, and lots of people have been asking questions about fat adaptation. Questions about ketosis, on the difference between when your body uses fats for fuel and when your body wants to use carbs. So I wanted to clear some stuff up. Make it known that you don't have to be keto to be fat adaptive, but you might need a little keto to get there. So let's talk about the science.
-So what is fat adaptation, and what is ketosis? Ketosis is where we are producing a certain amount of ketone bodies. By definition, ketosis is where we are producing between 0.5 to five to six millimoles per decaliter of ketones. We're talking about acetoacetate, beta-hydroxybutyrate, and acetone, the three main ketone bodies. That, by definition, is what ketosis is. But it doesn't necessarily constitute being fat adapted, where your body uses fat, or ketones, as a source of fuel. Like I said before, ketosis is just a means to get there. What you're doing in a state of ketosis, is you're nutritionally providing enough fats so that your body has the stimuli to produce ketones, thereby making you fat adapted for that particular point in time. You see, fat adaptation is where your body is actually accustomed to utilizing these ketones. It means it starts to change the body, the dynamic of the cells, so the body can use these.
-Let me give you a personal example. There was a period in my life where I was in a nutritional state of ketosis for about two years straight. Now I'm convinced that doing that, being in ketosis for that long of a period of time, got my body so fat adapted that nowadays, even if I'm not in ketosis, my body still wants to utilize fats as a source of fuel. I have become what I would consider sort of permanently keto-adapted, or fat adapted. In this video I really wanna show you how to get there, but you have to have an understanding of how it works.
-You see, maybe you've heard of the keto flu before. The keto flu is an interesting thing, because all the keto flu is, is where your body is so used to utilizing glucose and glycogen, the carbohydrates that we store in our muscles as a source of fuel, that it kinda freaks out when we have a massive influx of ketones. It just hasn't gotten to the point where it knows how to utilize them yet. You see, we haven't developed the enzymes to really break down those ketones or those fats very well just yet. We haven't developed the mitochondrial machinery to truly utilize those ketones the way that we need to within the cell. But it takes a little bit of time to get there, but when it does, it's awesome. You see, that's why the keto flu occurs. Because you're kind of in that gray area where your body's just not quite there yet. But once you're there, things start to happen. The cells say, "Wait a minute, I can use these."
-Let me give you another example. If you've been in ketosis before, and you've ever used those little keto sticks, the ones that you pee on, they turn a certain color if you're in ketosis, you may have found that in the first couple of weeks of ketosis, you showed a large level of ketones. You showed that you were in deep, deep ketosis on the keto strips. Then maybe three, four, five weeks later, you weren't really showing any ketones, and you started freaking out, thinking that you weren't in ketosis anymore. Well how that works is those ketone strips are measuring excess ketones that you're excreting. They're not measuring the ketones that you're using. So that's why, for the first few weeks, you excrete a lot of ketones, because your body isn't efficient at utilizing them yet. Make some sense? So just because the ketones drop off on that strip, doesn't mean that you're not in ketosis, or not fat adapted, it just means that your body is actually utilizing them, and you're not excreting the excess ones. So it's really, really intriguing.
-Now the thing is, studies are starting to show that you can remain fat adapted even when you're not in ketosis. So like I've said before, ketosis can be a tool for six to eight, ten weeks of being consistently in keto, to get your body optimized to using those fats as a source of fuel. Even Dr. Dom D'Agostino in the University of South Florida was talking about how people that have been in ketosis for a long period of time can usually get into ketosis much faster the second, third, fourth, et cetera, et cetera time around. They can just pop right back into keto 'cause their body already has the mitochondrial machinery and the cellular efficiency to utilize those ketones. So that's really cool stuff. That means even if you start consuming carbs and you come out of keto, your body still wants to use fats. So the second that you're in a caloric deficit, your body prefers to start using your body fat rather than breaking down your muscle tissue.
-And to make some total sense of this, I wanna reference a study. And this study is going to sound very, very familiar to some of the things that you've probably heard before, and definitely familiar to some of the things that I've heard as a nutritional coach. I'm gonna start with what the concern is. People always think that if they go into ketosis, they're gonna lose a bunch of muscle. They're gonna lose lean tissue, and this study proves that you do, but only in the beginning. Alright, here it goes. This study was published in a journal called Metabolism: Clinical & Experimental. And what they did is they took a look at test subjects that were on a keto diet that was low calorie, and a non-keto diet that was low calorie. Both diets had the same amount of protein. Well, three weeks into the diet, they found that those that were on the keto diet had a small decrease in their lean muscle mass. Yep, alarming, right? Scary. Don't do keto!
-This is the point where most people will freak out, and they'll say, "Ah, I'm gonna lose all my muscle, I'm two to three weeks into this diet, and I feel like I'm losing size." But guess what they found? After three weeks, the differences totally stopped. Meaning after that, after three weeks, whether you were in keto or not in keto, the amount of muscle lost or retained was the exact same. What does that tell us? That tells us that at that point, our bodies had become fat adapted, and started utilizing fat and no longer had to start sacrificing muscle to turn into glucose for fuel.
-So it goes to show that yes, when you first start keto, you might lose a tiny, tiny bit of muscle as a sacrifice for a lifetime of fatty acid utilization in the body. A small price to pay to know that you have now turned on a cellular mechanism for your body to utilize fat. You've turned on a cellular mechanism for your mitochondria to leverage fatty acids as a source of fuel. You have now become fat adapted. It's a small price to pay. It's like a small investment in your body to turn on and activate a part of your body that you didn't even know you had. That's the difference between fat adaptation and keto. So don't get them confused. Keto is required to get there, but it's not required to maintain it.
-Now, let me say this again. Keto is awesome, and it's an amazing lifestyle that you can live life, and live very, very happily with. I'm just saying that fat adaptation is different from keto. I love keto. It's a lifestyle for me, it's something that I'll continue to live just because it's great, and it's sustainable, and the health benefits are totally awesome. But that's just me.
-And just so that you all know if you are on a low carbohydrate diet, or a ketogenic diet, you're probably deficient in the minerals that you need to feel your best, so make sure you click on the link and check out some Magnesium SRT from Jigsaw, so that you can get your hands on the best stuff to help you feel your best when you're going through keto, low carb, or just good old life. I'll see you there.
